The Frank Marshall Davis Network in Hawaii

[bijou]

In a July 14 news release the “Honolulu Community Media Council” (HCMC) denounces Accuracy In Media and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for “shoddy journalism and smear tactics.” HCMC, headed by Chris Conybeare of the University of Hawaii, “finds” that “there is no substance to the claim” that “Frank Marshall Davis was a lifelong Communist and a mentor to (presidential candidate Barack) Obama.” 

Conybeare may be hoping that nobody else knowing the post-WW II history of Hawaii is willing to talk. Davis, it turns out, was just one member of a network whose works continue to exert influence to this day.     

...  Davis as Mentor   

What about Frank Marshall Davis’s role as a mentor to the young Obama? This is one of the assertions that Conybeare’s media council disputes.

Merriam-Webster defines “mentor” as “a trusted counselor or guide.” Was Frank a “trusted counselor or guide” to Obama?  And what “vision” did Davis give to the young Obama?

Consider these examples from Obama’s 1995 book, Dreams from My Father:     
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<li>Obama’s grandmother (Toot) and Gramps have an argument over whether Gramps should give Toot a ride to work after she had been threatened at a bus stop by a black panhandler. Obama looks to Frank to sort it out in his mind. (p. 89-91) </li>
<li>When Toot is having difficulty convincing the drug-abusing young Obama to apply for college, it is again Frank who is able to convince Obama that college is necessary.  (p. 96-98)</li>
<li>Frank delivers to the young Obama the one key lesson which radicals have sought to inculcate in the mind of every black person whether under slavery, segregation or civil rights: “…you may be a well-trained, well-paid ******, but you’re a ****** just the same.” (p. 97)</li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
</ul>
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In his short column about Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara’s “anger” at the “bloggers…twisting her research,” Star Bulletin columnist John Heckathorn lets slip: “In the ’70s, a by-then-elderly Davis was a friend of Barack Obama’s grandfather and would proffer advice to a young Barry, as he was called then.” Ooops. 

Are “critics of racism” being unfairly tagged Red, as Takara says?

In reality, Reds often unfairly tagged other “critics of racism” who did not toe the Communist line. The examples start with Davis himself. 

In the Honolulu Record of August 11, 1949, Davis denounces black leaders who criticized Communist Party member Paul Robeson for saying, “American Negroes would never go to war against Russia.” Said Davis, “They were like faithful dogs, trying to curry favor with their masters.”

In his memoir, Livin’ the Blues, Davis writes that when author Richard Wright in 1944 left the Communist Party, “his resultant series of articles in widely read publications was an act of treason in the fight for our rights and aided only the racists who were constantly seeking any means to destroy cooperation between Reds and blacks.” (p. 243)
 
There are other “critics of racism” who got a taste of the Communists’ tactics―from Davis. A 1949 letter sent to NAACP acting National Secretary Roy Wilkins by a Honolulu attorney and NAACP leader named Edward Berman:

“I was at one of the election meetings at which one Frank Marshall Davis, formerly of Chicago (and formerly editor of the Chicago Communist paper, the Star) suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize the membership about our ‘racial problems’ in Hawaii. He had jut sneaked in here on a boat, and presto, was an ‘expert’ on racial problems in Hawaii. Comrade Davis was supported by others who had recently ‘sneaked’ into the organization with the avowed intent and purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line….

…Already, scores of Negro members were frightened away from these meetings because of the influx of this element. Only by a reorganization with a policy that will check this infiltration, can we hope to get former members back into a local NAACP branch. We are going to have to have that authority over here―otherwise you’ll have a branch exclusively composed of yelping Stalinists and their dupes―characters who are more concerned about the speedy assassination of Tito (who had just broken with the USSR) than they are about the advancement of the colored people of these United States.”

Shortly after receiving this letter, the NAACP revoked its Honolulu Chapter’s charter in order to reorganize and prevent a Communist takeover of the organization.       

NAACP leader Roy Wilkins had another view of “cooperation.” Writing to CPUSA member William Patterson on November 23, 1949, he explains: 

“We remember the Scottsboro case and our experience there with the (Communist front) International Labor Defense, one of the predecessors of the Civil Rights Congress. We remember that the present Civil Rights Congress is composed of the remnants of the ILD and other groups. We remember that in the Scottsboro case, the NAACP was subjected to the most unprincipled vilification. We remember the campaign of slander in the Daily Worker. We remember the leaflets and the speakers and the whole unspeakable machinery that was turned loose upon all those who did not embrace the ‘unity’ policy as announced by the communists.

“We want none of that unity today.

“We of the NAACP remember that during the war when Negro Americans were fighting for jobs on the home front and fighting for decent treatment in the armed services we could get no help from the organizations on the extreme Left. They abandoned the fight for Negro rights on the grounds that such a campaign would ‘interfere with the war effort.’ As soon as Russia was attacked by Germany they dropped the Negro question and concentrated all effort in support of the war in order to help the Soviet Union. During the war years the disciples of the extreme left sounded very much like the worst of the Negro-hating Southerners.”

Wilkins’ final sentence should be considered when reading Frank Marshall Davis’s words to the young Obama: “…you may be a well-trained, well-paid ******, but you’re a ****** just the same.” Then as now, Communists see African-Americans as merely a tool with which to acquire power and are quite willing to send highly self-destructive messages in pursuit of that power.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4203

It's a very long article, but worth reading to see the connections of the CPUSA to Obama.